A Summer I’d Return To: Smile Project Road Trip

I follow a lot of nonprofit, writing, and kindness focused organizations and groups and recently, one of them sent an email with a reflection question of “what’s a summer you’d go back to?” 

To be honest, I didn’t love the question. Could there be a single summer that stands out amongst the three plus decades I’ve been given? I tried to think back on specific memories and was greeted by a rush of climbing trees in childhood and summer reading for AP classes as a teenager. Through the summer after high school where I made a “summer bucket list” and recruited my friends to help with things like “go to Kennywood,” “grill watermelon,” and “create an obstacle course in the backyard for my dog.” 

I thought back to my first summer in New York and my refusal to buy a window AC unit because “I was only going to be here temporarily.” (That was 2016.) The way we’d walk to the grocery store just to stand in the freezer section, only to be sweating again by the time we’d walked up the hill home. I was rifling through memories and relationships, adventures and mishaps, when I realized the obvious one was staring at me—the Smile Project Road Trip.

One item on the “Summer Bucket List” I’d made at 17 was to write a “real Bucket List.” One of the first things on that list? Drive across the country. I talked about it incessantly. As The Smile Project became a bigger part of my life, I wondered what it would look like to do a road trip for kindness. 

At the start of 2018, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled by my fulltime nonprofit job and began to seriously entertain the idea of quitting my job to travel. I was 23-years-old. Looking back now, I am, frankly, proud of the audacity. I’d recently been promoted and by all appearances was “making it.” Here I was, two-ish years into living in New York City. I had an apartment (and roommates), a good circle of friends and community, and a job in my industry that paid me a living wage and gave me space to save. And I was going to… quit? 

At the time, I was also doing some freelance work for another nonprofit who offered to pay me as a contracted employee or to pay me via a grant to The Smile Project. I took the latter and saw that as my investment into adventure. 

Thus began the real work. I tried to quit my job so I could spend a few months working freelance and give myself more time to plan the trip but when they asked me to stay until I left and to do work I was more interested in doing for the company anyway, I stayed. I don’t know where I found the time or energy to work full time, work freelance, work on Smile Project, work at a summer camp, plan an entire road trip, and then leave for 56 days. Looking back now, I am, frankly, proud of the ambition. 

I rented my room in the apartment to a friend, clearing space for her things, leaving her favorite ice cream in the freezer, and packing a bag for PA. I convinced my best friend to quit his job and gave him the (unpaid) title of Marketing and Logistics Manager. I learned how to rent a car and ordered magnetic stickers for the sides and back of the car announcing what we were doing. I studied maps and cold called nonprofits and downloaded apps for finding the cheapest gas stations near you.

On June 23, 2018, with a cooler of snacks and cookies that wouldn’t last past the Carolinas, my friend and I headed south. The next 56 days were spent covering 28 states and 12,896 miles. We ate 72 slices of pizza throughout the course of the trip. 

We also worked with over 30 nonprofit and community organizations, volunteering as we went to spread awareness for different missions around the country. We also donated hundreds of articles of clothing and hundreds of dollars of supplies to animal shelters. We spread spontaneous kindness, buying meals for dozens of people on a whim. We were featured on the news in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Omaha, Nebraska as well as my hometown in Pennsylvania. We saved a missing dog in South Dakota.

All throughout the trip, people decades older than us would smile and shake their heads… tell us we were smart for doing this while we were young… saying they wish they’d done something like this too. People kept acting like we were brave and interesting. I don’t think I appreciated then how special it really was. Looking back, I am, frankly, proud of our naivety. 

We rode in a fourth of July parade in Texas and met the mayor of Buffalo, Wyoming. We befriended the most inspiring team at a prison education program in Washington and visited the late King of Kindness, Chuck Wall in California. We spent time with literacy nonprofits and a refugee empowerment center and a homeless outreach program. We crashed on couches and in campgrounds and at friends of friends. We went clowning in Las Vegas.

I think often of the experiences we had on the road trip and the things it taught me about the United States and the importance of kindness and also about myself and how I move through the world. 

I have, my entire life, been a rule follower. A by-the-books. A “doing things that make sense” kind of person. Quitting a good job, throwing together this trip, putting ourselves out there like this? It was bold and it was (at times) stressful. I don’t know, sometimes, how we pulled it off.

Eight years removed, and I find I am doubting myself about something unrelated. What if I can’t figure it out? What if I’m not smart/strong/talented/etc. enough to make it work?

That feels normal. But are you telling me the same person that once worked four jobs until the week before she left for a 56-day road trip and then proceeded to plan the travel, accommodations, nonprofit outreach—and by the way, keep working two of the jobs from the road—can’t figure it out? 

The person who, after living in New York City for 2 years, was terrified to spend that much time behind the wheel but did it anyway and by the time she reached Texas was flying cruise control down open highways without an ounce of anxiety? You’re telling me she can’t adapt?

The person who would blindly call a nonprofit from the passenger seat and ask to plan an event together and that we’d be in their city in two days? You’re telling me she can’t figure out how to tackle a long to-do list from home?

Mid-June always reminds me of the Smile Project Road Trip but always in a fun, casual way. “Remember those friends we made in Alabama?” “Remember the accommodations in Idaho?” But this year, something new came to mind: remember what you’re capable of. 

What summer would I return to? 

I’d return to this summer of unmatched energy. Of not just bold dreaming but bold doing. Of saying I’m going to do something and then making it happen. The summer of figuring it out as we go. The summer of not always getting it right but learning from it. The summer of stopping at the Hoover Dam just because it's there. The summer of the biker bar in the middle of nowhere and talking to every single person we encountered. The summer of sprinkling our hearts around the country and watching it come back to us doubled. 

I’ve had many beautiful summers. More perfect days than I can count. But should I ever need to remind myself what I’m capable of, how lucky I’ve been to dream, and what it feels like to dive into life completely wholeheartedly, I think back to my younger self. My paper map of the United States. And the will to live every moment. 

Looking forward, I am, frankly, proud of what I’m building.